The story is awful — we are seriously in week 3 of a scandal storyline about two single people who may or may not have hooked up, orchestrated as a power grab from a lady who has exclusively been involved in “hooking up with wrestlers” angles and wears a gold “cougar” necklace — but Vickie Guerrero trying to get John Cena to break character and laugh on TV is my new favorite thing.

Vickie was AMAZING last night. From the impossibly-overconfident stuff here, breaking out phrases like “Johnny Boy” for no reason and goof-smiling her way through shit like THIS IS FROM A DIFFERENT SECURITY CAMERA BUT OF THE SAME ROOM as though any human being ever would buy it, to the Vince McMahon on-air meeting where she kept being forced to make decisions and tried to slide Dolph Ziggler into the discussion, she was the best kind of pro wrestling character. She was slimy and borderline-invalided, but she was fun to watch, and she was clearly having fun doing it.

If John Laurinaitis isn’t going to return as the Raw General Manager, Comedy Vickie isn’t a bad replacement.

Worst: Stop Using Secret Footage As A Crutch

That all said, man, who in WWE Creative has a hard-on for voyeur porn and thinks stories revolving around people obtaining security footage of shit is awesome? It’s never good, it rarely ever reveals anything (which you’d think would be the entire purpose of introducing VIDEO FOOTAGE OF SOMETHING HAPPENING to prove that SOMETHING HAPPENED) and it takes wrestlers weeks to piece together.

If Vickie had footage of John Cena and AJ buttf**king it wouldn’t matter, because again, they are two single people who are allowed to hook up, and even if it was an abuse of power thing, AJ’s been removed from power over it and life goes on. Proving John Cena is a liar isn’t something you need security camera footage for, all you gotta do is play that clip of him yelling REAL MEN WEAR PINK and follow it up with every gay joke he’s ever told. But yeah, if you have evidence of wrong-doing and you’re obsessed with being “right” and making Cena and AJ admit that they’re bad people, why stagger it and reveal a tiny bit every Monday? WHY ARE YOU ONLY DOING THIS ON MONDAYS? Why not just say “John Cena, did you have sex with AJ and get her fired,” wait for him to say no, then say “oh rly” and drop all of it on him? You are instantly SUPER RIGHT, Cena and AJ are exposed as liars and you can just witch cackle until they Charlie-Brown-walk away in shame.

If you’re Kaitlyn and you’re trying to get to the bottom of who attacked you, don’t make grand statements like “the person who attacked me … WAS A BLONDE” like you’re playing some big real-life game of Guess Who, give the proper authorities ALL THE INFORMATION YOU CAN GATHER and spend longer than from “when the show starts” to “when my segment happens” watching it. These are important things happening in your lives, you dumb fictional characters, take your lives seriously.

Best/Worst: Daniel Bryan Is The Most Popular Guy In The Room (And Losing In 2 Minutes)

British chants are funny. They’ll cheer for anything stupid you want. They love the “what” chant, they have quaint interpretations of assy smark chants (“YOU CAHN’T WRESTLE!”) and when the guy who says YES shows up they LOSE THEIR MINDS OVER YES. Daniel Bryan gets a Best for being the most over non-European person on the show and for getting “DAN-IEL BRY-AN” chants, even as he was losing.

The Worst is the losing. Not that he lost, necessarily, because Cody Rhodes is great and WWE loves the idea that a tag team wrestler loses singles matches easily (which they’ve always done, whether it makes sense or not … I guess if a tag team guy wrestles without his partner he’s only got a 50% chance of winning*!) (*WWE math), but because you’ve got Daniel Bryan wrestling Cody Rhodes in front of a hot crowd that wants to see them go and you take it home two minutes in to set up a different thing down the road. Can’t you set up the thing and take advantage of the thing happening right now at the same time? Couldn’t we have shoe-horned in another 5-10 minutes of wrestling before that finish? People probably would’ve been excited to see them wrestle again, instead of that weird thing we all are where we’re excited at the possibility of wrestling happening when they’re scheduled to wrestle. That’s the worst.

Worst: Damien Sandow Is Suddenly Pink Again

Sorry for using tweets on two pages in a row, but if I could think of a more accurate way to say what I’m feeling, I would:

John Cena takes off his pink stuff as soon as he’s not contractually obligated to wear it and pretend he’s not ashamed of it, and Damien Sandow gets his pink trunks back because people are supposed to wonder whether or not he’s gay.

That’s why I get shitty whenever WWE pretends to care about bullies or breast cancer. It’s fine, and I’m glad you’re using your time and money for something worthwhile, but being a wrestling fan involves accepting that you and at least 90% of the people who like what you like have some kind of mental disorder where a thing you love is about people who pretend to fight alienating as many people as possible to define who is bad and who is good and physically killing themselves to entertain America’s worst people. It sucks, but it’s the truth. Wrestling CAN be beautiful, and it CAN be an art form and it CAN bring people together and illustrated the best parts of sports, honor, fellowship and humanity, but there’s only one thing it ALWAYS is.

Anyway, I’m happy that Sandow’s back in the pink trunks so people think he’s gay, because my experience is that gay people are rad and way more fun to hang out with than the guy in the XXL t-shirt and jean shorts.

Best: Brad Maddox Is Saying Some Interesting Stuff If You Guys Would Stop Saying What And Listen To It

I guess the theme of this week is BRANDON GETS JUDGMENTAL ABOUT JUDGMENTAL PEOPLE. Sorry.

This is a pretty solid example of why we can’t have new or good characters. Brad Maddox shows up as a referee and does some crummy stuff, culminating in an inexplicable moment where he uppercuts Ryback in the junk and costs him the WWE Championship. So Maddox finally speaks and delivers a convincing, honest-sounding speech about how difficult it is to make it in WWE when you aren’t a monster or a genetic freak athlete and on the pressures of “making an impact,” and what happens? The crowd doesn’t even hear it. They’re just waiting for a pause to say “what”. Not saying “what” because they want him to shut up, saying “what” because they don’t know who he is and aren’t interested in something they don’t already know about.

It’s terrible. It’s the same reason they chanted “you can’t wrestle” at him when he talked about how he can’t do three flips in the air and land on his feet. Really? You guys don’t watch FCW, hell, you don’t even watch Smackdown, of COURSE you don’t watch FCW. You have no idea whether or not this guy can wrestle. If Chris Hero or Jon Moxley showed up on Raw and delivered the same speech, they’d get the same chant. Having to please the ignorant is one of the reasons I’ve always gravitated toward heels so much … they KNOW how ridiculous these people are, and see how fake it is when a guy like Cena says he’s only here because of them. You’re only here because you’re a handsome muscular tall guy whose dad was a wrestling promoter who got lucky because he’s got the body type and the can-do Republican troops-loving attitudes the boss of the company loves. That guy in the RVD shirt had f**king nothing to do with your success, John.

So as of now, I’m on Team Maddox. I hope next week’s Million Dollar Contract match with Ryback ends the way it should: with Brock Lesnar showing up to save the day, break Ryback’s arm and officially usher in Brad Maddox as a Paul Heyman Guy.

AJ is the hot girl so naturally Vince and Cena have to be put into story lines with her doing nothing more than hitching their wagon onto her raising profile and when she starts to sink, because of them, they jump off and she falls into obscurity on Smackdown.

I hope I’m wrong, but I feel like the name/gimmick “Fandangoo” tells us exactly how serious Creative is about the future of Johnny Curtis.

“That’s right, Johnny, we’re putting you on TV! Oh, but you’ll be playing a ballroom dancer named Fandangoo. Yeah, seriously. Oh, and John Cena, Jerry Lawler, and/or JBL will probably make a few gay jokes. Good luck, kid.”

2 words. Dolph and Ziggler. Sure, having a less than cool gimmick is pretty bad, but there have been worse gimmicks out there that have gotten over due to the performer’s capabilities. Before I pass judgement on this, I want to see how Curtis pulls it off. I mean look at Sandow. Conventional wisdom would have dictated that his type of character would have failed like it has everytime in the past. Yet, Sandow is in the process of getting over pretty damn well. I think Curtis has the ability to pull it off and want to see how he does first.

“I hate (hate hate hate) being that morose Raw reviewer who “hates everything,” and I try really hard not to be that, but man, there is nothing in pro wrestling staler than matches like this.”

Don’t feel bad, you’re a much better fan and journalist than I ever could be. I flipped over to see what was happenin’ on Raw during a MNF commercial break, observed some AJ slut shaming, and decided I’d stick with a semi-delirious Jon Gruden. You do God’s work Brandon.

While your HamBack comment was fucking fabulous, I just wanted to make sure you got some props for the Sheameo and Otunget (W/ special appearance by Mercutillicutty) brilliance. You rule, sir. Gold fucking star.

Brandon, I like your reports but I wish you wouldn’t “bail” on the last hour of a three hour show. If this report is just “The Best and Worst of the Parts of Raw I felt like Watching”, then I really think it loses something in the execution. I mean, you haven’t bailed on writing Jack Swagger of Mars, right?

The thing about that is that I don’t get paid to watch wrestling. I get paid to run a sports blog, and the wrestling column is a part of that.

The column itself isn’t an attempt to recap Raw, or to provide results or any kind of objective commentary besides what I naturally come up with. It’s my reaction to Raw. That’s it. Not overwhelmingly negative or positive on purpose, just what I thought when I was watching the show. Sometimes I just want to stop watching the show. It happens. Not a lot, but hopefully the 6-ish free pages of wrestling writing I give you guys every week can make up for me skipping a John Cena tag from time to time.

OK, so I haven’t been watching RAW for the past four weeks, but I have been keeping up through these reports, and OH MY GOD I HAVE NEVER WANTED ANYTHING MORE THAN I WANT FANDANGOO AND HIS SIMS BACKGROUND MUSIC ENTRANCE THEME OH GOD.

I think in retrospect I enjoyed this Raw. Vickie Guerrero is the obvious best, but main-event stars aside, it’s doing the thing that makes me love (then eventually hate) this show. All of this hope and potential! Brad Maddox: Actual Person, now with 100% more depth! Wade Barrett is a thing again! Miz wrestled for more than 30 seconds and maybe has some kind of direction to go in!

I know in my heart of hearts they’ll find some way to spoil it all, but right now it really makes me want to be optimistic, and also fantasy book Johnny Curtis’s Sailor Moon transformation into FANDANGOO into everything I can.

Yeah, some job related stuff, some family stuff, just makes sense to be back there right now. Sorry to leave you alone in the desert. Next Saturday would work for me, and I have no preference on strip buffets. I will defer to you good sir.

@Iron Mike, WWE’s idea of a heel is someone who does mean things that aren’t as mean as what the face does and is dumb as a pile of bricks. Also all WWE heels must be able to lose 200 consecutive matches before their feud ends.

Yanno what i don’t get? Why Yanks always think this is Wade Barrett’s Hometown when he’s from Preston near Manchester, it’ll be like saying in a show in Chicago that it’s Johnny Curtis’ Hometown. It’s not just you, as I said it’s every single American who mistakes towns for countries for some ridiculous reason.

For the same reason that I would be billed from New York City even though Im from Greenwich, CT. The McMahon family are the only people in the WWE allowed to be from Greenwich. Them and the Mean Street Posse.

Brandon, you should try to convince Burnsy to fill in for you in case you can’t do the B&W of Survivor Series! I’d give it a try myself if Survivor Series were to take place a week later, when I have time off from work.

I said it in the live stream, but good on Wade Barrett for being the only Superstar bothered to wear a poppy on remembrance week. WWE doesn’t want to know about any charity that Linda can’t cash in on.

The best of recent RAWs is Cole trying to one-up JR Facts. JR will say something like “Kaitlyn was a champion powerlifter in Texas,” and Cole will add in something he noticed on the touring bus like “and she can open a pickle jar in 2 seconds flat!”

I can’t participate in the live threads anymore since we made the budget decision to dump our cable and that makes me has sads. As to Raw this week, with the exception of Barrett and Dolph’s 3,467 elbows in a row on Jern, I was pretty damn indifferent. I was also really glad I was following the open thread while watching Raw this morning otherwise I would have convinced myself that I had hallucinated Fandangoo.

It’s not like Vince couldn’t add stipulations to the wwe-championship match, so there is a reason for CM Punk to not push his luck. But the best part of the whole segment was Punk reacting to Vickies “good news” that he and Ziggler would face Cena&Ryback… He was -this- close to ask Ziggler whether she was infact retarded…

“…being a wrestling fan involves accepting that you and at least 90% of the people who like what you like have some kind of mental disorder where a thing you love is about people who pretend to fight alienating as many people as possible to define who is bad and who is good and physically killing themselves to entertain America’s worst people.”

This is probably the teacher in me talking, but jeez, Brandon, throw in a semicolon or comma somewhere in there…

I was at this RAW and my friends and I are the ones who started the “You can’t wrestle” chant @ Maddox. It was a reference to his inability to get a WWE contract and not a critique of his wrestling ability. We also triggered an audible boring chant, but I’m not sure if it made it to the broadcast.

@Lester Alas, we waited intently for a chance to unleash “You Can’t Wrestle!” and “Holy Shit” but the opportunity never really presented itself. There was also talk of “We Want Puppies!” but we decided against it as a sign of respect for our wounded comrade, Jerry Lawler.

@Brandon It’s not a matter of bragging. Bragging about starting a wrestling chant is like bragging about successfully wiping your ass without ripping the toilet paper, I haven’t seen the broadcast so I was just wondering if it was audible or not.

Regarding the nature of the chants, I guess it comes down to mentality. Regularly attending futbol matches leaves you with this innate need to goad the opposition at sporting events, which in this case was a visibly nervous heel. Once we picked up on his unease, we did our upmost to fluster him and it worked. To me, that’s the essence of the heel/crowd dynamic.

Wait, I thought Sandow wears pink to express his intelligence? That he doesn’t surround himself with pettiness or follow the same thought process as common folk. I don’t think it ever occurred to me if it was for people to wonder whether or not he’s gay.

Does anyone seriously think Damien Sandow is gay? I’d be willing to conduct investigations if this is a genuine thing.

Also, because this was a pre-rec RAW, you could tell when they were dubbing in crowd noise. There is no way we were chanting for Sin bloody Cara. (NB – the “you can’t wrestle” thing was quite funny. It wasn’t a genuine “you suck! you can’t wrestle” chant – it was a reaction to his griping and moaning about wanting a contract. Also, everyone knows who Brad Maddox is and has done since he turned up on RAW in September. Everyone, that is, except WWE.com, who have been terrible at doing investigative journalism.)

My theory is they made AJ less crazy because of the Senate race. Hopefully I’m proven right next week.Womens clothing store features a superb range of women’s clothing for sale, suitable for all occasions.[www.dresslily.com]